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Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

nature.com

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Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#51

Post by JetAlone »

jimmydorry wrote: post #16
ipiz0618 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.

Labelling is one thing (putting a warning underneath posts with the current understanding of a given topic), but the step too far (in my opinion) was the silencing and deplatforming by way of removing posts and banning users. No company should have unfettered control over the metaphorical "town square" to control population-level discourse.

Ahhhh, it's not a town square. It's Mordor, the panopticon. And we're just a horde of orcs wondering when meat's back on the menu.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#52

Post by jeffbee »

optymizer wrote: post #33

I was the first in our office to go permanently WFH in February of 2020, three weeks before our offices closed, because I recognized that SARS-Cov-2 would be a huge problem, when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode. Here's the news that did not pass my bullshit detector: 1. Virus is not airborne (as initially claimed). I thought the water droplets claims were true for a while until I saw how fast i…

Puts against the spx e-mini march 2020 futures went from pennies to very much in the money in the space of a few days. With puts anywhere near the money - somewhere between 2500 and 3000 - you could have made pretty much arbitrarily large profits.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#53

Post by nradov »

optymizer wrote: post #33

I was the first in our office to go permanently WFH in February of 2020, three weeks before our offices closed, because I recognized that SARS-Cov-2 would be a huge problem, when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode. Here's the news that did not pass my bullshit detector: 1. Virus is not airborne (as initially claimed). I thought the water droplets claims were true for a while until I saw how fast i…

And yet for the vast majority of people it really was just a bad cold. I had a bunch of friends and family who got infected before vaccines were available, and that's literally how most of them described the experience.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#54

Post by PeterisP »

jayd16 wrote: post #27
ipiz0618 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They act like they are the "authority" when most of their initial statements were wrong. It's understandable to be wrong because no one knew much about this virus at first, and everyone, including the ones that were proven right, was making guesses. But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting.

>But labelling the opposite side as "misinformation" only to agree with them afterwards is disgusting. Is it though? If someone makes an unfounded guess and states it as fact isn't it fair to call that misinformation even if that turns out to be correct? What would be your preferred approach?

WHO had made an unfounded guess and stated it as fact, and called a position with as much basis as they did (arguably even more, but still inconclusive) as misinformation because it disagreed with it.

The appropriate approach would be to state "given current arguments, we are not sure whether it is airborne or not" instead of doubling down on their assumption/guess.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#55

Post by jeffbee »

nradov wrote: post #53
optymizer wrote: post #33

I was the first in our office to go permanently WFH in February of 2020, three weeks before our offices closed, because I recognized that SARS-Cov-2 would be a huge problem, when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode. Here's the news that did not pass my bullshit detector: 1. Virus is not airborne (as initially claimed). I thought the water droplets claims were true for a while until I saw how fast i…

And yet for the vast majority of people it really was just a bad cold. I had a bunch of friends and family who got infected before vaccines were available, and that's literally how most of them described the experience.

95% of people infected with polio didn't even know they had it, but we eradicated that disease anyway.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#56

Post by onethought »

optymizer wrote: post #33

I was the first in our office to go permanently WFH in February of 2020, three weeks before our offices closed, because I recognized that SARS-Cov-2 would be a huge problem, when pretty much everyone was in the 'just a flu/cold' mode. Here's the news that did not pass my bullshit detector: 1. Virus is not airborne (as initially claimed). I thought the water droplets claims were true for a while until I saw how fast i…

I'm going to assume you're in the US?

Most countries were already in the process of announcing health restrictions by February 2020. Taiwan had already been screaming for 2 months that it was airborne, and had limited airline travel and started mask mandates.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#57

Post by nradov »

jeffbee wrote: post #55
nradov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet for the vast majority of people it really was just a bad cold. I had a bunch of friends and family who got infected before vaccines were available, and that's literally how most of them described the experience.

95% of people infected with polio didn't even know they had it, but we eradicated that disease anyway.

What's your point? There's no way to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 because there are multiple animal reservoirs and the vaccines don't reliably prevent infection.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#59

Post by jeffbee »

nradov wrote: post #57
jeffbee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

95% of people infected with polio didn't even know they had it, but we eradicated that disease anyway.

What's your point? There's no way to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 because there are multiple animal reservoirs and the vaccines don't reliably prevent infection.

My point is the fact that the majority of infected individuals didn't suffer from it does not mean it is not a serious disease. Hardly anyone was paralyzed by polio, but we view it as an extremely serious disease.

Re: Why the WHO took two years to say Covid is airborne

#60

Post by kelnos »

heavyset_go wrote: post #29
cf141q5325 wrote: post #14

>“We’re really talking here about two failures, not one,” says Sandman. “Being reluctant to change your mind, and being reluctant to tell people you changed your mind.” Like other public-health and scientific organizations, the WHO “are afraid of losing credibility by acknowledging that they got something wrong”, he says. Quite a good summary for the entire clusterfuck that was the pandemic response. I still cant wra…

> You dont loose credibility by acknowledging you were wrong Disagree, plenty of organizations and people lost credibility in the eyes of some for doing just this as new research emerged over the course of the pandemic.

I agree with that. But I think there's a small gap in credibility loss between "being right in the first place" and "being wrong, but admitting it promptly". And a much larger gap between "being wrong, but admitting it promptly", and "being wrong, and refusing to admit it until everyone has known you were wrong for a long time".
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